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“We don’t have to,” she smiles. “But you should know that trauma can elicit all sorts of different responses.” She pauses, her brow knitting as she thinks an idea through. “Is your issue the dichotomy between wanting control in your day-to-day life but wanting to submit in your sexual life? Or is the issue with expressing that desired switch with your husband?”

“Maybe…both?” I say quietly. “It makes zero sense. When I’m out hunting⁠—”

The sudden alarm in Dr. Fallon’s eyes checks me.

“When I’m…conducting business,” I say. “Yeah, I’m in charge. I’m the boss. So why do I…you know.”

“Why, after high-intensity situations where you’re the boss and the decisions are yours to make, do you want to give all of that control up?” She smiles and sets down her tea. “Did you know that 16% of surgeons meet the screening criteria for alcohol or substance abuse and dependency? That number goes even higher if you look at high-pressure specialties like neurosurgeons or combat triage surgeons. If you focus on pediatric oncology, it goes through the roof.”

I furrow my brow as I sip my tea.

“Every professional dominatrix will tell you many of their clients are high-level CEOs, usually men, who spend all day giving orders. I’m not saying every powerful man secretly wants to be put on his knees and spanked. But for some people, surrendering control is appealing precisely because they spend the rest of their lives carrying so much of it. People’s psyches need a break. They need someone else to drive sometimes.”

Huh.

“I’m not specifically a sex therapist, Britney,” she continues. “But, from a general viewpoint, my guess is that you want to be submissive in bed because of the control you carry in other facets of your life. Does that make sense?”

“Annoyingly so, actually,” I grump.

She chuckles quietly. Then her brow furrows. “Are your preferred sexual dynamics part of the friction between you and your husband?”

My mind immediately rewinds to two nights ago, when Damiano pinned me down in that dark corner of The Seven Bells and…

Yeah.

“Took control” is putting it mildly. More like “hijacked my fucking brain and hacked into my darkest, most depraved desires, even finding ones I hadn’t known about until that second.”

Like, the blood thing? I’ve never had any problem with it, in fact I’ve been known to, shall we say, revel in the mess it can make.

Fun fact: one body has twelve pints of it. One and a half gallons. Which, coincidentally, is the amount of paint it takes to cover an average bedroom.

Ask me how I know.

So, no, I’ve never been one to mind some blood. But I can’t say I've ever thought of it in a sexual context.

At least, not before two nights ago.

The really scary thing about the other night isn’t that Damiano took control from me. It was how desperately I wanted to hand it over.

How obedient I found myself wanting to be. How much I loved transforming into this bizarre version of myself who whimpers, and submits, and begs.

That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

Not that he took control.

That I gave it to him so fucking willingly.

“Britney?”

I blink back to the present. “Sorry, could you repeat the question?”

She smiles. “I was asking if you think your preferred sexual dynamics are part of the friction between you and your husband.”

I groan. “That might be the one place we don’t have friction, actually.”

Her lips quirk. “So the two of you have been sexually active?”

Well, Doc, he pulled my tampon out at a bar, SUCKED IT, and then finger-fucked me into oblivion while he made me taste my own period blood off his fingers, and I genuinely think all of that may have contributed to the best orgasm of my life. Does that count?